The lot is a steep and complex slope, but this is an Ingham & Boyd design, and therefore it is symmetrical at all costs. The style is the usual restrained Ingham & Boyd classicism with no columns (they disliked columns) done in white brick, their favorite material for schools, with terra-cotta accents around the entrance.
Much effort has been put into keeping this landmark building in good shape and in use, and we wish success to the enterprising community members who are trying to find tenants for it.
The Stanley was designed as a silent-movie palace, but opened in 1928, just as talkies were making a revolution in the movie business. The architects were the Hoffman-Henon Company of Philadelphia. It was the biggest theater in Pittsburgh when it opened, and as the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts it is still our biggest theater now.
A picture of the Loew’s Penn, now known as Heinz Hall, that got stuck in here by accident. Father Pitt would have taken it out, except that a kind commenter identified it, and old Pa Pitt does not like to disappear his mistakes,Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Nikon COOLPIX P100.
The skyscraper behind the theater is the Clark Building, which was built at the same time and designed by the same architects as part of the same development package.
St. Richard’s parish was founded in 1894 and immediately put up a temporary frame church. Two years later, a rectory—obviously meant to be permanent—was designed by J. A. Jacobs in a restrained version of the Queen Anne style.
In 1907, the parish started building a school, which would also have temporary facilities on the ground floor for the church until a new church building could be built. It was partly financed by “euchre and dance” nights.
Father Pitt has not yet succeeded in finding the name of the architect, but he has found a lot of newspaper announcements of euchre and dance nights.
The permanent church was not yet built in 1915 when this convent, designed by Albert F. Link, was put up. Although the second-floor windows have been filled in with much smaller windows, and the art glass has been replaced with glass block, the proportions of the building are still very pleasing.
We note a pair of stained-glass windows in one of the filled-in spaces on the second floor. If Father Pitt had to guess, he would guess that they came from one of the central windows that are now filled in with glass block.
It turns out that the permanent church was never built. The dwindling congregation continued to meet for Mass on the ground floor of the school until the parish was suppressed in 1977. The school became St. Benedict the Moor School, and the ground floor was finally converted into the classrooms it had been designed for. Later the school moved to larger facilities at the former Watt Public School, but the parish kept up the old building as an events center.
Three similar houses in a row, Pittsburgh Foursquares with dignified classical detailing, and all three in beautiful shape. Father Pitt has was told by the owner of one of them, an architect and community activist, that they were designed by Ulysses J. L. Peoples.
Although the houses clearly go together, window placements and other details vary.
“Modern Ionic” capitals—the kind where the volutes (the spiral things) stick out at the four corners, as opposed to classical Ionic capitals, which are meant to be seen from the front and have pairs of volutes rolled up like a scroll.
A trio of bay-fronted apartment buildings on Jackson Street. The design is not out of the ordinary, but it is a neat and elegant implementation of the ordinary. The bays, as Father Pitt likes to point out, are not mere decoration: they really do suck in the light, which is valuable for people who like natural light.
This building shows up as a theater on a 1916 map, and that is all Father Pitt knows about it.
The intersection of Brownsville Road and Narrow Avenue (now Newett Street) in 1916.
It is not documented at Cinema Treasures, where theater fanatics have catalogued 178 theaters in Pittsburgh, or at the expiring and impossible-to-navigate Carrick-Overbrook Wiki, so it may not have lasted very long as a theater. (And Father Pitt is only making the assumption that it was a movie theater rather than a live theater or vaudeville house, because the latter seems much less likely for the era and place.) If anyone from the neighborhood knows the story of this building, the information will be received with gratitude. The building is well kept: it has been updated just enough to be useful to its current tenant without destroying the original design of the exterior.
When we last saw this triple building, it was getting a fresh coat of paint. The new color scheme looks much better, and old Pa Pitt offers his congratulations to the people with taste at Mozart Management.
The three connected buildings were put up in 1901 as the Howard, the Delaware, and the Norfolk, and we can just barely make out the ghosts of the inscriptions above the entrances. The architect was William E. Snaman.1 The Norfolk, above, preserves the original appearance. In the other two, the balconies have been filled in to make closets, and they looked forbiddingly blank with the old paint scheme; the more artistic new scheme at least emphasizes the surviving trim.
Source: Pittsburg Post, September 25, 1900. “It developed yesterday that ex-Mayor Bernard McKenna and a syndicate of local capitalists will be the owners of the three apartment houses now in course of erection in the Highland avenue residence district, particulars of which were announced in this column last week. They were designed by Architect William E. Snaman, and the contract for their erection has been let to L. E. Umstead, of Allegheny. Each will stand on a lot 40×100 feet each at Highland avenue and Bryant street, and will be of brick and stone, and three stories high. When completed and ready for occupancy the houses will represent an investment of over $100,000.” Thanks to David Schwing for finding the clipping. ↩︎
Carrick became a borough in 1904, and for this little all-in-one borough building hired the big-deal architect Edward Stotz.1 It must have created an impression of prosperity when it was built in 1905, and it still looks solid and respectable today, one year short of a century after the people of Carrick voted for the borough to be annexed by the city of Pittsburgh in 1926. It has been converted into a retail store, and the huge second-floor window makes an excellent display for the current tenant.
The building originally had an elaborate baroque crest that has been shorn off. We can see it in this picture, where the municipal building appears behind the Carrick Hotel:
You could count on architect Press C. Dowler for the bankiest-looking banks. The correct Ionic front of this one looks almost exactly the way he drew it, as we can see from the architect’s rendering that was published in the Press on February 8, 1931.
It seems to old Pa Pitt that the mark of a Dowler bank is correct classical detail combined with a lack of fussiness. There is never too much detail. But he takes the details seriously. In other buildings he was already adopting Art Deco and modernist styles, but a bank needed to look traditional and timeless—especially in the Depression. For other Dowler bank designs, see the Coraopolis Savings and Trust Company and the Braddock National Bank.
